


Payment in kind

by randomisedmongoose



Series: Stobotnik surprise [7]
Category: Sonic the Hedgehog (2020)
Genre: Bad Things Happen To Bad People, Blood and Gore, Gen, Homophobic Language, Murder, Racist Language, Torture, not from Robotnik tho, spot the celebrity!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-27
Updated: 2020-03-27
Packaged: 2021-03-01 07:01:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,208
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23347354
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/randomisedmongoose/pseuds/randomisedmongoose
Summary: Five people, four visits, five corpses. The doctor doesn’t like people playing rough with his toys.
Relationships: Dr. Eggman | Dr. Robotnik/Agent Stone
Series: Stobotnik surprise [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1653382
Comments: 35
Kudos: 154





	Payment in kind

**Author's Note:**

> Remember those five people that tortured Stone to get access to Robotnik’s research? Yeah… goodbye to those poor sods. Parts of this are dark and gory, so pay attentions to the tags and steer away as needed. This fic brought to you by Powerwolf, Sabaton, DragonForce and Blind Guardian, because when you’re sick, stuck inside and getting really frustrated, a bit of power metal is really nice.

_Whether or not all of them they deserved it is a matter of perspective. Worse people than them avoided blame in the Hague or got the Nobel Peace Prize. The world is sometimes cruel and unjust, and sometimes bad things happen to bad people, with the help of really bad people. Don’t worry about it. It probably evens out in the end._

* * *

**The physician**

Danielle was feeding her cats when the doorbell rang. She rolled her eyes. Definitely the last time she ordered from that place! They’d taken way more than 30 minutes by this point. Digging in her purse and gently nudging the tabby out of the way, she opened the door.

“Seriously? How long am I supposed to wait-”

A long, lanky man in black with short hair and a waxed moustache stood in the doorway. Two large white egg-shaped things hovered at head height beside him. His hands held a notable absence of pizza. Before she had time to scream, he had moved forward and pushed her inside the apartment, one hand on her mouth. She backed backwards into the living room and ended up against the wall. He released her and took a step back. Danielle stared at him.

“You’re- you’re that doctor. The crazy one. They said you were dead,” she whispered.

Robotnik scoffed. “To quote Mark Twain; the report of my death was an exaggeration. Yours, however…” He reached into a pocket and rather theatrically pulled out a wad of papers and started flipping through them. “Your name is Danielle Hansen. You’re a medical doctor. You have provided ‘medical assistance’ during a number of covert interrogations, including but not limited to some carried out at Guantanamo.”

The eggs hovered menacingly. Danielle had trouble keeping her eyes off them. She nodded, nervously.

Robotnik pocketed the papers and crossed his arms in front of him. “Do you remember the interrogation of one Aban Stone?”

She tore her eyes from the eggs and looked at him, then at the floor. “I don’t- they don’t tell me names…”

Robotnik sneered. “Of course not. So hard, getting emotionally attached, yes? I suppose I can relate. So much easier with hoods on and no names given. But since you recognise me, I do think even your limited mental faculties can recall my name being mentioned in the questions levied at this particular subject?”

She swallowed hard and nodded. “Yeah.”

“That settles that then, don’t you think? Goodbye, Ms Hansen.” He raised his gloved hand and pressed some sort of touchpad. The eggs suddenly broke apart, revealing an array of muzzles, all pointing at her.

She raised her hands, sudden panic in her voice. “Please! Please, no, I was just following orders!”

Robotnik stopped, his hand still poised for the _coup de grace_. “Oh, I know. But you followed reprehensible orders from the wrong people. Repeatedly, I might add. A particularly asinine and cowardly mistake on your part. However, I do appreciate that you’re just a pawn, a useless little lackey who only does her job.” Robotnik’s mocking, sing-song tone turned into a look of cool disgust. “That’s why you die first, and fast.”

He pushed the button, and the hovering, egg-shaped turrets opened fire. Danielle was flung against the wall by the force of the hail of bullets. She was dead by the time she hit the floor.

Two cats looked out from under the kitchen table, hissing and trembling, as Robotnik left the apartment.

* * *

**The agents**

He vaguely recalled having met them before. Agent Oshiro had been one of the failed ones, managing to stay on as his assistant for a mere two days before requesting a transfer due to “severe emotional stress”. A weakling, a paper-pusher, a bureaucrat, marginally competent at sorting through information and planning missions and nothing else. Agent Sherman was a different type entirely – typical black-ops, specialising in detainment and interrogation of foreign operatives. The few times Robotnik had interacted with her she had displayed a level of antisocial behaviour that registered even on his radar. Nowadays they worked as a team, apparently, a nice little buddy-cop-movie setup. The brain and the brawn. Sherman got her hands dirty and Oshiro took care of the paperwork.

All it took was hacking into their GPS, sending them to the wrong location – instead of the rural meth lab they were supposed to investigate, they ended up at a disused radio tower at the end of a long dirt road. The black car rolled to a stop in front of the rusty door, and Sherman exited on the passenger side, one hand inside her jacket. She consulted her phone and bent down to talk to Oshiro, when a voice rang out.

“Oshiro. Sherman. I’d say how nice it is to see you again, but I hate lying.”

Sherman straightened up and pulled her gun, looking all around, but the woods were empty. Or… no. In the twilight, white shapes were moving between the trees, at all sides, closing in. She swore and backed up against the base of the building as Oshiro stumbled out of the car and joined her.

“You remember my drones, don’t you? I’ve always been satisfied with their accuracy. If you’ve forgotten, let’s have a little demonstration.” The eggs closed in, slowly but surely.

“Robotnik!” Sherman let out a long hiss. Oshiro turned an unhealthy shade of green. He shakily pulled his own gun and waved it around, trying to locate the source of the voice.

“What’s his all about, doctor?” he croaked. “If you wanted to get back in with the bureau, you’d better talk to the people in charge...”

Robotnik’s laugh rang out, echoing between the trees. “What, you don’t want to talk with me, Oshiro? Why would that be? You sound like you’re ready to piss your pants for some reason.”

Sherman punched Oshiro in the arm and glared out into the darkening woods. “Skip the playacting, doc, we know why you’re here! Come out and face us like a fucking man instead of letting your toys do the job!”

“Why would I soil my hands with the likes of you? Now die for the government like good agents.”

The white eggs glided closer. Sherman reacted instantly and emptied her clip at the approaching badniks, shooting down three of them before running out of ammo. She grabbed Oshiro and made for the door. They managed to get in before the remaining badniks fired, peppering the walls with hundreds of holes. The bots advanced on the tower, but were held back by irritatingly competent gunfire from both agents. Four more exploded or fell to the ground incapacitated.

Robotnik sighed in his hidden location between the trees. _If you want something done right, you have to do it yourself._ He crouched down and ran up to the side of the building, out of sight from the agents. When he was in place, he directed the bots to move inside and provide continuous fire to make sure the agents were out of bullets. When the fire had died down, he followed the eggs inside.

The room was a mess. A couple of chairs lay broken on the floor, a table was turned over and rusty radio equipment was scattered about. He didn’t have much time to take in the interior, however. As soon as he was a few steps inside, Sherman jumped up screaming from behind the table and attacked him, brandishing a long, serrated knife, as Oshiro remained, cowering in place.

Robotnik jumped backwards, surprised, and quickly guided an egg to shield him. The knife scraped along the tempered steel, leaving a long, ugly stripe until it wedged between two plates and was wrenched from her grasp. When she grabbed onto the egg to throw it to the side, it pulsed and released an electric shock that fried her hands and sent her flying backwards across the room. Robotnik laughed and raised a hand to command the badnik to shoot her, but nearly fell forwards as Oshiro jumped onto his back, brandishing a pencil. The agent plunged it towards Robotnik’s neck, managing to draw blood but missing any vital parts. The doctor grunted in pain and tried to throw him off, but Oshiro had his hand across his eyes, screaming shrilly at Sherman.

“Kill him, do something, come on!” He raised the bloody pencil again but froze mid-gesture as a small red dot bloomed between his eyes and the majority of his brain splattered onto the floor behind them. Slowly, he fell back, thudding into the soiled, mouldy carpet. Robotnik straightened up and held a hand over his bleeding neck as he waved away the badnik that had blown Oshiro to kingdom come. He advanced on the prone Sherman, swearing under his breath. Cradling her burnt hands towards her chest, disoriented and hurt from the electric shock, she nevertheless tried to get up to lunge at him, but her legs gave way and she fell down again. She hacked out a deranged laugh as the doctor looked down at her.

“You bastard!” She spit weakly at him. “The bureau will get you, Robotnik. They’ll catch you and they’ll fuck you up so much more than we did with your little pet. Hey, did he tell you he was begging me to kill him? Did he, huh?” She chuckled and crawled up to sit against the wall. ”I had so much fun. We spent a lot of time together even when the general didn’t have any more questions.” She leaned her head against the wall and leered at him.

Robotnik clenched his fists and stared down at her, replying through gritted teeth. “No, Sherman. In fact, he never told me _anything_ about you. I’m quite sure he doesn’t even remember who you are.” He reached out and grabbed the damaged badnik and pushed a few buttons on the side. A red light started to blink deep in its camera lens, starting slow but increasing in speed. He let the badnik hover and stalked towards the door.

“Give him a kiss, doc! Huh? A kiss from Ely, do it! Tell him I miss him, doc, tell him!” She laughed until she fell over. He ignored her.

The self-destruct countdown was done by the time he reached the cloaked flyer at the edge of the woods. The blast was strong enough to collapse the building, bringing the radio tower crashing to Earth with a deafening screech of tortured metal. He paused, resting his hands on the cold side of the machine to stop the trembling. Then he punched the tempered steel, again, and again, over and over until the skin on his knuckles split and warm blood coated the inside of his glove.

* * *

**The man in the black suit and sunglasses**

The man in the black suit and sunglasses didn’t exist. This didn’t pose much of a challenge for the doctor; in fact, he found the situation rather funny – a ghost chasing a figment of some Hollywood mogul’s imagination. It just meant that a different approach was needed.

In a nameless location in a nondescript town in a vast and empty state there was a facility, cleverly hidden among the scrublands and derelict buildings. But not cleverly enough. The many sensors and cameras showed no sign that there was someone breaking open the doors, as they were now busy monitoring various spots in the sky and motes of dust in the vicinity rather than the entrance, as they should.

When inside the main door, the doctor put the earbuds in and selected a song on his phone. As the bassline of Will Smith’s “Men in Black” started thumping, he stretched and sighed. He’d missed this.

_The good guys dress in black, remember that_

_Just in case we ever face to face and make contact_

Robotnik chuckled and pulled on the lapels of his black coat. He took a dancing step to the right, then the left, deftly avoiding the invisible beams of light that would give him away. A silent army of hovering eggs watched him work. He whirled around, avoiding the motion sensors and tapping on the keypad in sync with the music.

_But yo we ain't on no government list_

_We straight don't exist, no names and no fingerprints_

He put his hand on the print-identifier, letting the glove cycle through billions of fingerprints in a matter of seconds until it beeped and pulsed green. The door opened with a faint hiss of hydraulics. He took a flying leap through, gliding to a halt on the floor of the large room beyond and facing its occupants.

_Cameras zoom, on the impending doom_

_But then like boom black suits fill the room up_

A row of silent figures, all dressed in identical black suits and sunglasses, all holding a weapon of some sort, many of them quite unusual and definitely not standard issue, at least on this planet. He turned the music off and spread his arms as the badniks filed in, taking up positions behind him, guns pointed at the row of suits. Behind a desk he could see the man in charge: a tall, black man with short cropped hair and a thin moustache, quite handsome in a stone-faced way.

Robotnik nodded at him and lowered his hands. “Director J.”

The director sighed and replied in an irritated monotone. “Dr Robotnik. It’s been some time. Congratulations on returning home, by the way.”

“Too kind. I hope you’re enjoying your afternoon?”

The director grimaced and sat up in his chair. “So far, it’s containing a bit more excitement than I hoped for. Why are you here, doctor? Hopefully not to pull the same stunt you did at Area 51.”

Robotnik looked around the large room. “I see you’ve redecorated! Love what you’ve done with the place, that touch of neo-brutalism that large organisations seem to thrive within. And the technology! Why, I count no less than fourteen of my designs in this room alone. Tell me, have you found the emergency shutdown sub-routines yet?” He raised an eyebrow.

A look of uncertainty crossed the director’s face. “You’re bluffing.”

“I don’t bluff, director. In fact, I pride myself on being _painfully_ honest.” The doctor picked a USB-stick from a pocket and held it up. “I brought a present. A little script, just for you, to get rid of that pesky sub-routine. By all means, keep your toys, play all you want; I’ve already passed this obsolete tech by several milestones.”

The director eyed the stick. “And in return? You came all this way, doctor, I can’t imagine that you just want to give us this out of, hah, the goodness of your heart.”

Robotnik tucked the stick into a side pocket and held his hand out. A bot zoomed up and handed him two heavy gloves with massive amounts of wiring. The doctor pulled them on. As he flexed his fingers, electricity started to spark between his fingertips. He smiled humourlessly.

“I want agent G.”

The director looked temporarily taken aback, and his eyes flickered ever so slightly towards the row of suited people.

“Agent Gee? Why- oh. Ah. I see. The military liaison. Yes. We had heard of that.” He gave Robotnik a calculating stare, drumming his fingers on the desktop. He glanced at the army of sleek, deadly eggs hovering behind the doctor, then back to the row of black-clad people, each of them armed and ready to fire. He pursed his lips in irritation, then snapped his fingers.

“Dee. Ay.”

Two of the suits grabbed a heavyset man that stood between them and pulled him forward. When he protested and tried to wrench himself free, two more stepped in and held him. The director nodded towards Robotnik, and the four suits dragged the man to stand in front of the doctor.

“He’s all yours, doctor. All I ask is you make it short.”

“Oh, I’ll make a short, alright.” Robotnik grinned and flexed the fingers of his gloves again, making them fizz and crackle. Agent G tried to move, but his former colleagues held him tightly.

“Military liaison, huh? That’s a fine euphemism. Any last words?”

Agent G struggled again and snarled at the Doctor. “Fuck you!”

“I’m taken.”

Quick as a striking rattlesnake, the doctor grabbed the man around the throat and squeezed. The suits holding him quickly let go for fear of getting caught by the bolts of lightning. Electricity surged through the gloves and into the struggling agent, burning the skin and dancing within his soundlessly screaming mouth. Robotnik bared his teeth and squeezed harder, holding on until the shaking stopped.

The smoking corpse hit the floor with a sickening crunch.

The director pinched the bridge of his nose. “I do hope that no shadow falls on us because of this, doctor. It was, after all, nothing personal. I would prefer to keep having a professional relationship with you – after all, you are one of the few people outside this organisation that has had contact with an alien world.” He gestured to the dead agent on the floor, and a few of his peers started to haul it away.

The doctor brushed his hands off and handed the gloves back to the bot, then pulled the little stick from his pocket and gave it to Colin, which zoomed over and dropped it on the director’s desk. The man quickly picked it up.

“The password is ‘RobotnikRules’. You need to enter it correctly exactly 154 times, otherwise it will fry every piece of tech that I had a hand in.” The director tried to hide his look of irritated disgust, but not quickly enough. Robotnik smirked.

“As for maintaining a ‘professional relationship’…” Robotnik put the song on again, this time letting it echo throughout the large room. He put a finger up, waiting for the chorus.

_Here come the Men in Black (oh, here they come)_

_They won't let you remember (won't let you remember)_

Robotnik put his head to the side and took his finger down. “You may not let me remember, but I won’t let you forget. Nothing personal. Goodbye, director.”

He whirled around and left the room, accompanied by the badniks. When the last of the music had rung out, the director stood up from his desk and sighed. His head agent joined him. The director handed her the USB-stick.

“Fix this immediately. And run every malware detector we have through the whole system. I don’t trust that malicious asshole not to infect us, whatever he says.” The agent nodded and hurried off. The director sat down again and stared at the door. “I fucking hate that song.”

* * *

**The general**

He had to wait quite a while before general Quincy Allen Hobart returned home. It was relaxing, sitting there on the man’s horribly patterned sofa, drinking his 20-year-old Laphroaig in the dark, with only the humming and whirring of the search-and-detain badniks for company. An hour and twenty-six minutes later than usual, he heard the sound of a key rattling in the lock.

As soon as the general crossed the threshold, the badniks swarmed him, grabbing his arms and legs and sent him crashing to the floor. The man put up a good fight for his age, but to no avail.

“Why, general Hobart. Glad you could join us, finally. Your mistress really gave you your money’s worth this time, hmm?” Robotnik leaned forward and saluted the general with his own scotch.

Hobart stopped struggling as he heard Robotnik’s voice. “You!” Fear, anger and surprise mingled in his face.

The doctor took a long draught of the single-malt and languidly regarded the amber liquid. “Yes, me. Astute of you to notice. I see that your powers of observation haven’t changed a bit since we last met.”

Hobart’s cheeks grew an alarming shade of red. “Robotnik, you absolute maniac! Let me go, you psychotic lab rat – I’ll have you court-marshalled for this-“ He abruptly stopped as the strong liquor splashed into his face.

“But I’m not a part of the US military anymore, remember? I’m not even alive. A state of being that I soon hope to introduce you to in some detail.” Robotnik put the empty glass down, rose from the sofa and started to circle the general like a predator stalking its prey. “You could have had it all, general. I could have let you leech off my genius, suckle from the sweet nectar of my accomplishments and play your meaningless little game of global hide-and-seek with whoever you think is your enemy for the day if you had just left. Him. Alone. But you couldn’t even manage to do the simplest of simple tasks: to abstain from action. You had to _meddle_.”

Realisation dawned on the general’s face. “You’re talking about _Stone?!_ ” He spit on the floor. “I knew it! I knew there was something up with you and that fucking reprobate! Always sucking up, always prancing around you with those sissy coffees. That’s why we can’t have homos in the military, fucking little pervert deserved all he got-“

The doctor silenced him with a backhanded fist across the face. The general coughed and spit up blood as Robotnik crouched down in front of him. Hobart tried to start talking again but the doctor grabbed his head in a vice-like grip, one hand on the top of his skull and one under the chin, preventing him from opening his mouth.

“No, no, no. Shhhhh. Don’t talk. We both know your cerebral functions aren’t up to the task. I’m already fully aware that you were the, ha, brains behind that whole idea. No wonder that it was done so incredibly ham-fisted. No wonder you left him so _broken_.” After he hissed out the last word, he let go of the general with a hard jerk. Hobart breathed hard and stared at him as he straightened up and adjusted his gloves.

“I’ve been quite busy since we last met, general. Seeing new vistas gets the imagination going, you know. Do you recall that some time after we first met, you requested that I manufacture a biological weapon for you? You wanted, and I quote, “something that’ll make those goddamn Arab ragheads think twice before attacking good American soldiers”, end quote. I declined, because I detest that type of organic warfare.”

He bent down and punched Hobart in the gut, making the general retch and gasp for air. He grabbed the man’s hair and turned his face up towards him.

“And also because you’re a racist, homophobic little turd.” He released him again with a disgusted sneer. “My badniks are clean, simple and straightforward. If they want you dead, they kill you. They don’t waste time on terror. I did, however, happen upon a very interesting compound while spending some time away. Did you know that some species of fungus can produce extremely visceral hallucinations?”

Robotnik rummaged in a pocket and held up a small vial with a brightly violet fluid inside. He moved it back and forth in front of Hobart, who followed it with sweat running into his eyes.

“I remember that you on several occasions called me robotic. Inhuman. Machine-like. Such compliments, Hobart! See? I’m blushing. This is my bashful face.” Robotnik gestured to his features, completely devoid of emotions. “I’ve decided that I will do an exception in your case, general. I will act like a human, for once. Congratulations.” He snapped his fingers.

A little white ball hovered up and stopped in front of the general. A small arm popped out of a hatch, carrying a syringe. Hobart’s eyes went wide and he tried to get away from the larger robots holding him, managing only to make them tighten their grip. Robotnik slotted the little vial into the syringe and entered a few commands on his glove. Colin zoomed up to the struggling general and found his arm. Another appendage popped out, carrying a pair of scissors. After a few missed attempts, the little bot had managed to cut open the shirt and reveal the general’s arm. Robotnik steered one of the larger badniks to hold Hobart completely still as the needle entered the general’s vein. The syringe emptied its content, and the little ball drew back to hover above Robotnik’s shoulder, who absently reached a hand up to pet it.

The general started twitching. Then he started shaking. And then he started screaming.

Robotnik sat back on the sofa and poured another helping of the scotch as he watched the general writhe on the ground, fighting whatever spectres his imagination had conjured to torture him. After a couple of minutes, the general’s face took on a blue sheen and a vein bulged in his forehead. With a strangled gurgling he fell face-forward on the floor and lay still.

Robotnik put the glass down and scanned the general’s body. No heartbeat. No brain activity. Intra-cranial aneurysm. He smiled, then snapped his fingers, gathering the badniks to him as he rose from the sofa and left without a backwards glance. There was no need to leave any messages. The ones who could read the signs would know why there was now five people dead that were alive at the beginning of the week.


End file.
